BreakPoint: Communism’s Failed Promise

Heaven on Earth Without God

November 20, 2017

This week marked a century since one of the darkest chapters in human history began, and a truly evil worldview was put into practice.

One hundred years ago, Bolshevik revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, the seat of the Provisional Government of Russia. They also seized post offices, train stations, and telegraphs in the dead of night. When the people of Russia’s capital city awoke, they were in what Rhodes Scholar David Satter described as “a different universe.”

That universe was a communist one. Vladimir Lenin’s so-called “October Revolution,” which took place in November on the Gregorian calendar, sought to establish the first-ever Marxist state. After a lengthy civil war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics emerged, marking one of the greatest setbacks Western Civilization has suffered since the fall of Rome. Communism would eventually rule one-third of the planet, condemning one-and-a-half billion people to lives under brutal, totalitarian governments, and leaving behind a trail of over 100 million corpses.

So many people died because, as Satter explains in The Wall Street Journal, the communist worldview sees the state as supreme, replacing God, Himself. It’s infallible, it transcends morality, and it demands absolute loyalty from its citizens.

Karl Marx taught that only such a state, acting for its people, could break the chains of economic oppression and private property, creating a “new man.” This type of person, depicted in Soviet propaganda posters with bulging muscles and steely eyes, would work willingly for the common good, seek only to advance the interests of his comrades, and usher in a worker’s paradise.

The communist ideal was nothing short of a godless eschatology—a Heaven on earth.

What we got instead was hell on earth. Through political purges, forced population transfers, manmade famines, gulags, and a so-called “Great Leap Forward,” dictators like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot presided over some of the worst mass murders in human history, all directly motivated by the desire to bring about that communist paradise.

It wasn’t until Christmas 1991 that the darkness which had fallen on Russia in 1917 began to lift. The Soviet sickle and hammer descended over the Kremlin for the last time, quietly announcing the end of what President Reagan had dubbed the “evil empire.”

But for millions of people the world over, this godless worldview remained and remains a political reality. China’s forced abortions, Cuba’s political repression, and North Korea’s persecution of Christians are just some of the atrocities that have continued in communist countries since the fall of the Soviet Union.

And here in the United States, communist ideology enjoys a kind of immortality in our universities, where many professors openly identify as Marxists, and students sport those ever-popular Che Guevara t-shirts.

One recent survey by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that half of millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist democracy. More than 20 percent have a favorable view of Marx, and thirteen percent think of Joseph Stalin as a “hero.”

The only good news is that 71 percent of those surveyed couldn’t identify the correct definition of communism. They don’t understand what they’re praising.

As we look back on the aftermath of that October revolution, we should commit ourselves to teaching our kids, our friends, and whoever else will listen where communism belongs: squarely in the dustbin of history.

Perhaps the best way to commemorate communism’s 100th birthday is to pray that we can fully and finally bury this evil worldview in our lifetimes.

Communism’s Failed Promise: Heaven on Earth Without God

As Eric has urged, educate your family and friends on the failed utopian promises of communism, as well as the results of its worldview on humankind. And continue to pray that the scourge of communism will end on the earth.

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Comment Policy: Commenters are welcome to argue all points of view, but they are asked to do it civilly and respectfully. Comments that call names, insult other people or groups, use profanity or obscenity, repeat the same points over and over, or make personal remarks about other commenters will be deleted. After multiple infractions, commenters may be banned.

Phoenix1977

“Perhaps the best way to commemorate communism’s 100th birthday is to pray that we can fully and finally bury this evil worldview in our lifetimes.”
The worldview itself is not bad. The way several of the communist leaders dealt with it was. There is nothing wrong with the ideology of thinking of the greater good and think about others instead of only yourself. But for the average Russian nothing changed: they went from the totalitarian regime of the Tsars into the totalitarian regime of Lenin. Which was never what Karl Marx intended to begin with. Marx always saw communism for industrialized countries, not for societies depending mostly on farming and mining like Russia or China.

If Lenin and his followers truly lived by “for the people, by the people” things might have gone differently. But the way they ruled the USSR the fall of communism was the only available outcome. People only take oppression and abuse for so long.

Scott

“The worldview itself is not bad.”

For someone who loves scientific evidence, you have none in your defense here. Only a theory that has failed (to the tune of 150,000,000 dead) in practice.

Phoenix1977

“Only a theory that has failed (to the tune of 150,000,000 dead) in practice.”
Perhaps if they had done it the way Marx described it instead of adjusting it to their own views …

Steve

Perhaps Marx’s theory cannot be instituted by fallible human beings.
Look at the evidence of the 20th century.

Phoenix1977

“Perhaps Marx’s theory cannot be instituted by fallible human beings.”
Hmm, perhaps. They sure as hell can’t seem to work democracy either. Look at what is residing in your White House nowadays.

Scott

Nice try… but Trump is not even close to Mao, Stalin and Hitler.

Steve

Very weak argument we have been hearing recently, comparing Trump to murderous dictators. Easy to throw around accusations like that but very hard to give concrete evidence of your comparison. That is why the “Trump is Hitler” people usually just yell it and then don’t give any reason to back it up. Noise…
You see, democracy is not something that is imposed; rather it is practiced by all involved. Just so you know, the US is a constitutional republic.

Robert Cremer

Phoenix you do not understand communism.
“… the communist worldview sees the state as supreme, replacing God, Himself. It’s infallible, it transcends morality, and it demands absolute loyalty from its citizens…”
Communism has never worked and will never work, it is a failed worldview. Nothing you say can change that reality. Please wake up to reality.

Phoenix1977

“Phoenix you do not understand communism. ”
I live in Europe. Communism has been here the day Marx published his theories and has never left since. So I think I understand it perfectly.

“Please wake up to reality.”
That’s rich.

Steve

My guess is you never have lived under a totalitarian Communist regime or you wouldn’t be so much of a cheerleader.
Beware the enthusiasm of non-combatants, as they say.

Phoenix1977

“My guess is you never have lived under a totalitarian Communist regime or you wouldn’t be so much of a cheerleader.”
No, but I have lived (and witnessed) the trouble of capitalism. Communism may be flawed but capitalism is plain evil.

Scott

LOL… you are alive. Tell your story to the 150,000,000 and ask them if they agree.

Phoenix1977

I’m not really into seances …

Scott

Ha! : – )

eddie333

Scott wins the point.

Scott

Sorry… I should have left the “Ha” out. I didn’t really intend it that way. Just laughing at the joke.

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But, the communist worldview assumes that man can overcome man’s limitations and imperfections through his own efforts (i.e. a violent Communist revolution). As a created being, man’s faculties and abilities are limited by the Creator. Furthermore, the Fall of man introduced death, decay and sin into man and the universe. Man cannot overcome these effects through his own efforts (Genesis 1-3).

Similarly, there is the quandary of the ‘greater good.’ Every man’s idea of the ‘greater good’ is different, and every man lives as a limited and imperfect being in a fallen world filled with other limited and imperfect beings. Therefore, the ‘greater good’ is an illusory term.

Communism’s true vision was not to live ‘for the people, by the people’ (from the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln) but to displace God with man. This premise is a reflection of that old temptation that was whispered in the Garden of Eden under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil so many centuries ago: Ye shall be as God. As such, communism is just another manifestation of the 2nd oldest faith: man without God.

As such, man’s attempt to overcome his limitations and imperfections was doomed to institute another totalitarian regime. Marx and Lenin were just like all other men; limited and imperfect (flawed). When the communists implicitly ascribed God-like qualities to themselves via their worldview, they inevitably turned to violence when the could not accomplish everything that they wanted. Indeed, Karl Marx’s ideology calls for a violent revolution to supplant the ruling classes; not just ‘thinking of the greater good and think about others instead of only yourself.’ Marx always intended for much more, and all his disciples planned and acted accordingly.

Phoenix1977

“As a created being, man’s faculties and abilities are limited by the Creator.”
So why strife to be more than you were born to be than? Sounds awfully like the Caste system in India (which is now abolished).

“As such, man’s attempt to overcome his limitations and imperfections was doomed to institute another totalitarian regime.”
Compared to what?

Steve

Yet another in the long line of Communism apologists who say, “if only they had implemented it correctly it would have worked.” In not one communist country has it ever worked, regardless of difference in cultures and geography. Communist ideology always falls apart as soon as it is attempted to be implemented. “For the average Russian, nothing changed.” You are clearly ignoring the 60 million or so who died under Lenin-Stalin. A lot changed for them.
Marx said: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That sounds great but falls apart as soon as you think about it for a while. Who decides what is taken and what is given?
Tell me, Phoenix, why in every single communist country they have to build walls in order to keep people in? Why they have to use force to enforce their “beneficent” policies? Why are the media placed under state control and the churches closed and clergy murdered?
Anyone who has such a warped view of communism needs to read The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In it he documents from first hand knowledge and hundreds of eyewitnesses what occurred in Soviet Russia.
In Russia it is required high school reading. In other parts of the world, where communism has not been Imposed the people remain ignorant of the atrocities committed under communism.
The evidence is in. Over 100 million have paid with their lives. Communism doesn’t work no matter how much you want it to.

Phoenix1977

“You are clearly ignoring the 60 million or so who died under Lenin-Stalin. A lot changed for them. ”
And how many died under Tsar Nicholas? We don’t know because the incomplete records Russia kept were destroyed during the revolution.

Steve

So all of these failed Communist systems failed because they weren’t pure Marxism?
And if the beneficent dictator were in charge everything would work out fine?
Tell me, Phoenix, how many people have risked their lives taking a raft from Florida to Cuba?
There are good records on that and the number is zero.
Read the Gulag Archipelago and educate yourself on the reality of Communism.

Steve

Take a look at a map of the world at night and look at the Korean Peninsula. That is all you need to know about what a failure communism is.

Phoenix1977

And it suits my argument perfectly. Because North-Korea is a farming based community, not an industrial one.

CharlesOConnell

A certain current trend in auto-brainwashing is to assert that “All Wars Are Started by Religions!”

But consider the actual record of killing by the messianic-atheistic, secular humanist regimes of the 20th century, as recorded at the University of Hawaii’s Freedom, Democide, War, Power Kills website. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/

The 20th century’s Big 3 death toll far overshadows
the worst European war of religion (regrettable as that smaller number is):

Thirty Years War 5,750,000
Compared to three 20th century dictators
3.8%

Mao killed 70 million, Stalin killed 60 million, Hitler killed 20 million, the 30 Years War, brought to you by “the people who start all wars”, killed: 5.75 million, 3.8% of the Big Three 20th century total.

But all this is infinitesimal in comparison with the incalculable death toll of the innocent unborn—if they’re not Persons, neither are you—at the hands of Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger, NARAL, NAF, the Rockefeller Population Foundation, the Ford Foundation and UNFPA–easily half a billion, with no end in sight.

Harry Wegley

Marxism fails at its foundation, the presupposition that human beings can only be happy in an economic sense and that human happiness requires some form of economic equality. In reality, its relationships that give us happiness. That’s how God wired us. Marx missed the mark, terribly. Yes, Marx was wrong, but I have more than that against him. His followers, the Bolsheviks, murdered my great granddad.

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Yep, when you worship a god that you despise, that god makes you into his or her chattel slave. I think that that’s what happened with Karl Marx.

Areas under communism’s control were always riven by the black market, and by a process of natural selection, only the most ruthless black-marketeers survived. Often not for long but they didn’t care. So the communist societies were battered economically from two sides: the ruthlessness of the state and the ruthlessness of the black market. A terrible time and place to live.

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Another great read is Witness, by Whittaker Chambers. His first chapter is a “Foreword in the Form of a Letter to my Children,” and it is worth the price of the book. It is not some dry technical-philosophical refutation, but a gritty artistic work that illustrates the dark spirit and soul of communism as only an artist and an ex-communist can. And it points to Something Greater.

Jlo too

The first thing that is needed is to get the communists and socialists out of our education system!!

Jlo too

Why has communism failed? Because it did not/does not take into account the fact that men are sinners –self-centered –and will not live for the greater good only. Men live for themselves–their selfish selves, when they were created for and meant to live for God, and one another for God’s sake. The desire to live for others instead of oneself will only happen by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, such as happened in Acts 2. That cannot be dictated to someone from the outside by the govt–but has to come from within a man’s heart, voluntarily, when inspired and moved to a life of love by the Holy Spirit. It has ONLY been accomplished by the CHURCH, when full of the Holy Spirit and will only be perfected in Heaven. And since Communism denies God, Heaven, the Church and the Holy Spirit—they will never have a perfect society.

marianknight

Communism was the biggest illusion of the 20th Century . Please read Rev. Richard Wurmbrand’s books 1) Who was Karl Marx . Where he proves that Karl Marx and Engels was a Satanist from his letters and poems and speeches 2) Tortured for Christ . Where he gives his testimony of what he suffered in a Romanian Communist prison for 18 years .